A court in ex-Soviet Belarus has sentenced main opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich to 15 days in prison for taking part in a big rally the previous day that police said was unlawful.Milinkevich, who has become a focus for opposition to veteran president Alexander Lukashenko, said he was being made a political prisoner."This is a political action, a political sentence," the bearded Milinkevich said after the judge read the ruling. "Leaders of leading political parties are behind bars."Other leading opposition activists were also detained in an apparent crackdown by authorities after about 7,000 demonstrators took part in a rally on Wednesday. Milinkevich told Reuters earlier he was guilty of no offences.... http://www.cnn.com

Some 35,000 chickens at a poultry farm in Norfolk are to be slaughtered after dead birds tested positive for a strain of bird flu. The dead chickens were found on Witford Lodge Farm in North Tuddenham, about 13 miles (20km) west of Norwich. The government's chief vet said it was likely to be the H7 strain, virulent among chickens but less of a threat to humans than the H5N1 variant. Dr Debby Reynolds added she did not know where the flu had come from. Last month a swan in Cellardyke, Fife, tested positive for H5N1 - the only confirmed case in the UK so far. Dr Reynolds said there was so far no evidence of the H5N1 strain in the chickens from the Norfolk farm. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4949026.stm

President Bush generally favors plans to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at U.S. citizenship without leaving the country, but does not want to be more publicly supportive because of opposition among conservative House Republicans, according to senators who attended a recent White House meeting.Several officials familiar with the meeting also said Democrats protested radio commercials that blamed them for Republican-written legislation that passed the House and would make illegal immigrants vulnerable to felony charges.Bush said he was unfamiliar with the ads, which were financed by the Republican National Committee, according to officials familiar with the discussions....http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/26/AR2006042602191_pf.html

The CIA has operated more than 1,000 secret flights over EU territory in the past five years, some to transfer terror suspects in a practice known as "extraordinary rendition", an investigation by the European parliament said yesterday. The figure is significantly higher than previously thought. EU parliamentarians who conducted the investigation concluded that incidents when terror suspects were handed over to US agents did not appear to be isolated. They said the suspects were often transported around Europe on the same planes by agents whose names repeatedly came up in their investigation. They accused the CIA of kidnapping terror suspects and said those responsible for monitoring air safety regulations revealed unusual flight paths to and from European airports. ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1762212,00.html

More than 15,000 Romanians who fled areas flooded by the Danube River are crowded into tent communities and faced with dwindling food supplies, residents and volunteers said Wednesday.With waters still rising after about two weeks of flooding, hundreds have taken refuge on a hill overlooking Chiselet, a village of 3,400 people in south-central Romania.Some are in makeshift shelters made from plastic sheets, while others have crammed into army tents. Food is running low, they say, and there are no toilets, forcing them to use a nearby field.Volunteers and authorities on Wednesday brought bread, clean water and canned foods -- provided by the government -- and promised to set up portable toilets Thursday....http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/04/26/romania.floods.ap/index.html?section=cnn_world

In what Australia's defense minister has called an "unacceptable, terrible mistake," the body of the first Australian soldier to die in Iraq has been left behind in Kuwait.Instead, the wrong body was loaded onto a commercial flight that arrived in the southern city of Melbourne early Thursday.Private Jake Kovco, 25, died in Baghdad on April 21 when he accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.The blunder left his widow, Shelley Kovco, distressed and had Defense Minister Brendan Nelson demanding answers over the mix-up.Nelson ordered Kovco's body be brought home immediately -- by private charter, if necessary....http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/04/26/iraq.australian.mistake/index.html?section=cnn_world